Bill Hocker | Aug 4, 2014

Supervisors, Planning Commissioners and Planning Directors

My name is Bill Hocker and I reside at 3460 Soda Canyon Road.

I have been heartened by the consideration now being given to the cumulative impacts of tourism wineries that have been proposed in the last few years, and commend Commissioner Phillips for her substantial questions to the planning department. With a tourism winery currently proposed in our neighborhood it is a discussion of timely concern.

May I first take a moment for an apology. Last month I penned a letter-to-the-editor describing the Yountville Hill hearing as "political theater". Written the next day while the unusually charged events of the proceedings were still fresh, I would now describe it as somewhat intemperate (some might even have seen it as scurrilous). I admit, while my intention was to satirize the proceedings, I perhaps crossed the line and satirized individuals. I apologize to Commissioner Pope and to other members of the commission who do, I believe, honestly agonize and deliberate, and occasionally change their minds, over the proper role of tourism in the future of the county.

Indeed, I noted with admiration in a letter to the commission before that hearing Mr.Pope's eloquent posing of its proper role during the May 20th joint meeting: “Do we want to maintain an agricultural economy that benefits from tourism, or do we want to transfer into a tourism economy that capitalizes on agriculture?” It is the same question at the heart of Commissioner Phillips' requests, as it has been in every discussion of the county's future over the last 50 years.

I can sympathize with the desire of commissioners to have more guidance in making their decisions. If it turns out that the answer to Commissioner Phillips' first question, also posed by Supervisor Luce at the May 20th hearing, is that capacity already exceeds the grapes available, then the commission, in approving more projects merely adds to a demand that increases the price of grapes leading to higher prices for Napa wine, making it less competitive in a global market and more reliant on tourism to compensate for falling profits. Tinkering with capacities or visitation numbers in their approvals becomes just a process of deciding how fast to transfer to a tourism economy. To deny the proposals, which might bring a manageable and proportionate stability to both the agricultural and tourism economies is to bring lawsuits on the county by the developers entitled to their projects by the WDO. I can see why there is angst in the response to Mr. Pope's dual question. Everyone wants the former result but all that is offered is the latter.

The strains of development impacts at the heart of ever expanding tourism, the unmitigated impacts recognized at the time the WDO was created, are beginning to show. They are represented in traffic, urban boundary pressure and the consumption of vineyards and water. Each new building project, parking lot, left-turn lane, traffic light, sewer and water hookup added to accommodate the rising number of tourists and the workforce that must cater to them has begun to nibble at the finite amount of land and resources necessary to maintain the agriculture, and each has begun to degrade the rural, small town life that is its byproduct and that is our treasure. In 1990 those unmitigated impacts were considered an acceptable consequence of the value that tourism might bring to an agricultural economy. Now however, as the prospect of a finite agricultural resource is reaching its limit (assuming the 75% rule survives) how will agriculture fare against the influx of a tourist facility taking a bite out of every property larger than10 acres and of the infinite tourist dollars they can bring? That question also needs a metric.

In Napa, in the last 50 years, a successful rural agricultural economy has been built in defiance of an urbanized world. It is a modern miracle. Or so we would think were we not to know of the continuous war fought by preservationists against profiteers to maintain it. In 1990 the preservationists got the 75% rule and the profiteers got the tourists. Both have worked to enable a balanced system (more credit I would say to the 75% rule). In 2010, with everyone scared by the recession, we got only more tourists and commitment to more development. And the system is beginning to wobble.

It is time to stop the tourism-winery projects being proposed. It is time re-think the winery definition ordinance that enables their proposal. As the acreage and water resources at the base of the economy begin to reach their limits, rather than seeking ever increasing profits in non-agricultural development, in tourism, we should work to sustain the stable profitability of the balanced system that already exists. That successful balance is an achievement that you, as the custodians of the ag preserve legacy should be proud of. The most important question to be asked now is how do we preserve our modern miracle for the next 50 years?

Thank you once again for this opportunity to vent my anxiety over the future of my neighborhood and of the county.

Bill Hocker

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